The Trolley Problem By Judith Thomson

Is it moral to sacrifice one’s life for the sake of saving another? Would it be moral to kill one individual to save the lives if maybe five people. To sacrifice or essentially kill a person to save another can be a task that is rather difficult or immoral for most. It brings up the question of morality of a human being. Most human beings find killing another human to be immoral. It is not in human nature to take another person’s life. Even though this may be true, Judith Travis Thomson brings up a scenario that tests people’s morals, The Trolley Problem. He lays two main scenarios that both involve an uncontrollable trolley heading towards five men working on the track with the opportunity to save those men by sacrificing the life of an …show more content…
You are standing upon a bridge that sits right above the railroad track. You see the trolley barrelling down out of control with no way of stopping. You then see at the end of the track five people working on it. There is no way of warning the five people or stopping the trolley,they will inevitably be killed by the trolley. There is a very large fat man that is on the bridge with you. You know through having a clear understanding of physics and of the train itself, that large heavy object, approximately the size of the fat man can stop the train. You would just have to simply push the fat man off the bridge. The question on hand for this one would be would you push the fat man off? A large percentage of people would say no to this problem, due to people having the logical guilt of pushing the …show more content…
It is a scenario designed to see if you are willing to sacrifice one’s lives for the sake saving other lives. The true test is though the decision a person would make it the specified scenario. It has been shown that people make different decisions depending on the scenario, even though it has the same premise of killing one person to save five lives. This problem has been reworked throughout the years to be applied to a countless of scenarios with still the same premise of sacrificing one’s life for another. I understand that people’s lives are at stake and compensating for just one life may seem better but after analyzing Judith Travis Thomson Trolley Problem and many more remakes of this, I have come to the conclusion that I would let nature take its course. I would not be able to flip the lever or push the fat man off the bridge or any other scenario in that matter because of the same premise of me stepping in and killing another person. I must disagree with most, that people are willing to kill another person for for the sake of another. It would be difficult to live a normal with the dark memories and guilt that it comes with killing an individual. This may be the case for me but for others it can be the other way around. Such as people can not live with letting so many lives perish just for the sake of letting one live. Some may deem it as worthy sacrifice.